My little home network has 2, sometimes 3, users. Nothing has 802.11N capability. High priority users (me) use wired connection to the router mostly, but not always.

The problem: One wireless client hogs the network bandwidth with streaming video and other stuff sometimes.

Proposed solution: Buy a new ASUS WL-520GU ($44 from Amazon). . Flash Toastman Tomato-ND-1.28.8754-Std. Set up QOS to throttle the problem user way back when I want the streaming video bandwidth. Somehow toggle the QOS settings to open the problem user's bandwidth when I don't need it.

The questions: Does this seem like a reasonable solution to my problem? Can someone suggest better, easier, or cheaper solutions?

If I go ahead with this idea, I'll probably be back to ask for help with the toggling.

I don't use QOS so I can't help there. But is there a particular reason you chose the WL-520GU? I know you don't currently have any 802.11N capable devices but I suspect that could change in the near future. The Asus RT-N12 is about the same price as the WL-520GU and supports N. The one thing the RT-N12 does NOT have is a USB port, whereas the WL-520GU does. If you don't need USB on the router then I would consider the RT-N12 instead.

I chose to mention the Asus WL-520GU because of it's price point versus what my little network can utilize now. On your advice, I guess I could invest twice as much money for the highly-forum-touted RT-N16; although I'm a senile old f***, long retired, ex-firmware engineer, with little ambition (or money) to invest in my home network any more than I have to to get it to work acceptably.

I'm considering investing in switching from my rural ADSL service (which often slows to a snail's pace) to a totally-non-guaranteed-10MBS cable internet $$$$ service. I want to know, before I do that, if I can get a fair share of the increased speed/throughput by throttling back my problem user/son's share.

Can the RT-N16's N stuff be quesced so as to not use resources or cause any interference, while the network only uses G?

With the Toastman firmware, can I really reduce the throughput of one client, to divert the network resources to the priority client (me); with *both* doing, say, Netflix streaming movies? That is, unequal resource-sharing. I have spent 4 days reading Tomato websites, forums, and "documentation", and still don't understand if that is feasible.

(BTW, I have a deep understanding of firmware "documentation". I could write a book — if I hadn't forgotten many of the funniest horror stories.)

QOS is about setting priorities, you can give those applications that you use a higher priority than others, or you might even give priority to your own machines by MAC address. You can also set a low priority to the offending P2P user. There are several ways to achieve your aim.

If you load one of my recent builds with the "erase NVRAN option checked, when it boots you will see that a complete set of QOS rules and some new class name labels appeared. They have been split up into individual rules to act as examples. Looking at the graphs it is possible to see roughly what rules are having an effect and can adjust the setup accordingly. That's rather up to the individual to get right, of course. But generally you can control the amount of P2P bandwidth by the outgoing and incoming rate and limit settings for the default (P2P) class.

Netflix uses common (HTTP, HTTPS) ports to stream video. Maybe it can be classified by an L7 filter, if not, you would have to put up with it sharing your web browsing. No big deal.

As far as one individual rogue P2P client goes, there is a also second option if he is nevertheless bypassing the QOS rules, and that is to use the "Bandwidth Limiter" to place a restriction on his bandwidth. That can be enabled and used at the same time as QOS. You can limit individuals or all clients.

As a third method, you can even turn off QOS and then use the "Bandwidth Limiter/QOS" as a quite separate QOS system, it can set priorities by IP or MAC address and set the bandwidth available to that particular user or group of users. You would give yourself a higher priority and more bandwidth, I guess.

My new RT-N16 arrived Wednesday. After 3 days of swapping back and forth between it and my old router, struggling to troubleshoot why it didn't work, I finally figured out that its default IP address is the same as my ADSL modem's. Changing one IP digit in the router allowed it to work. After testing it wired and wireless with all 4 of my usual and intermittent clients, I crossed my fingers and flashed Tomato-ND-1.28.8754 without a hitch. Changed the IP address again and the network works fine.

Today, I started using Verizon Broadband's (my DSL provider) speed test to sample my connection speed. The provider is obviously clamping my connection speed at 742 Kbps download and 142 Kbps upload. So far, I have not measured any slowdowns. No wonder I'm considering switching to cable internet, eh? The Tomato bandwidth graphs clearly show those limits saturating with any kind of bulk data transfers. I intended to experiment with bandwidth limiting and QoS, but question whether that is worthwhile at this speed. What do you think?

Toastman's instructions make it clear that I should not start imposing limits before measuring my network usage stuff. The answers to the following questions must be here in this forum, but I have not been able to come up with the right search terms to find them.

The Tomato real time and last 24 hours bandwidth graphs offer a choice of "Uniform" or "Per IF" (or perhaps it is distorted "Per IP"). All I see is a slight amplitude difference between the graphs. What do those choices mean?

I have explored the Tomato user interface for 2 days now, and have yet to discover how to measure bandwidth usage by by protocol (P2P for example), or by client IP or MAC, or any but the above mentioned graphs. How do I do selective measurements?